Thank you all for the comments and criticism. This story was originally only the very first part (minus the last sentence in that section), which I discovered was too short to make the minimum wordcount, so I kinda... added a bunch of random stuff to pad it out. I wasn't really expecting it to do well, but I hadn't entered a Writeoff since the first original short story round (October 2015, Eye of the Storm). Apologies for making everyone suffer through this, I know it needs a lot of work.

The lesson here, at least in my case, is don't submit experimental pieces. I'm at a sort of crossroads in my writing where I focus more on the bizarre and surreal, and because I'm still a novice writer, I'm not yet at a place to pull it off. But as someone who has entered Writeoffs in the past, I should have remembered that!

Thanks especially to >>Ranmilia for your feedback early on. There's a lot of good critique in your comment that I'll take to heart in future stories (and I've unfortunately always been bad at good first lines; it's something I'm ashamed to admit), and I'm sorry that this story was so opaque. To be honest, I'm not really sure what I was going for either, plot-wise.

If nothing else, writing this did help me get back to writing on a daily basis. Thanks again to everyone for your comments. It means a lot that you took the time to read through this atrocity and actually give me meaningful feedback. Until next time!

Echoing >>Xepher with the rhythm. This was well done for the most part, but the bizarre on-again, off-again rhyming threw me for a loop, and there were a few lines that had a syllable or two extra. I enjoyed the content, and while I think the style worked in your favor, I'm not sure the piece is successful as a whole. It didn't really draw me in.

I want to like this story more than I do, but it came across as vague and hard to understand. I'm not sure what exactly is happening here, and that's really what drags this down. I had hoped the characters were in reference to some work, but searching reveals nothing. The interactions between Judith and Gloriana were excellent, but I didn't feel any connection to them throughout the story.

Maybe someone more versed in story analysis than I will love this, but it's just not my cup of tea.

Sorry, that's a no-go, author. The first paragraph is actually what threw me; it doesn't make sense. How is 4034 larger than 4969? Combined with copious spelling mistakes and the pure randomness of the content, it just falls flat.